Kiko Daring Game first impressions and swatches

It's not a change of season if I don't come up with a post about Kiko's latest LE. This autumn's theme is, according to Kiko, the exciting game of seduction. Or something like that.

Personally, I really dig the Casino Royale theme, and the packaging is really pretty. Can't say the same for the prices, 6,90 for the nail polishes is a bit too much.. polishes have always been the cheapest element of a LE, now there are eye pencils that cost less...
And it's not the only complaint I have for the nail polishes:

From L to R: 02 Irresistible Orchid, 01 Prestigious Taupe, 03 Suggestive Red, 04 Intuition Wine, 05 Exclusive Blue, 06 Slick Bluenoir.

Look at the colors, there is nothing groundbreaking there. The finish is probably a crelly, they're slick but not so much pigmented. Oh and there is nothing blue in 06, I've tried looking at it in various angles and to me it's just a plain black. Oh and yeah, surely, the packaging with the dice effect is nice but you have to remove it, it only covers the cap, it's not part of it. Sorry but for me this is a downside, it makes everything a bit less practical.

 From L to R: 24 Majestic Dove Grey, 29 Irresistible Teal, 20Mysterious Acai, 10 Bold Rosy Taupe, 22 Fine Jade, 11 Charming Champagne, 8 Sinuous Shell, 33 Likable Blackberry
 What I really liked were the Color-Up Long Lasting Eyeshadows (aka the big chubby eye pencils). I hope I got the identification of the colors right beacuse the numbers had faded on all the pencils and some colors are really similar. I also realized right now I am missing the swatches of 31 Tasteful Indigo, but I could swear it wasn't among the testers.
The quality seems very promising because once you wear them, they don't seem to smudge or fade, I've worn a couple of them on my hand yesterday and I had to wash them off at the endo of the day because they were still perfectly there. 29 Irresistible Teal is the most interesting color of the bunch for me (a shimmery teal with cold undertones? hell yeah). 11 Charming champagne seems like a bunch of glitter on a transparent base, 20 Mysterious Acai looks like a glittery nail polish turned eyeshadow and 33 Likable Blackberry is the only matte of the bunch. What a weird assortment of colors.. but they make me wish it were already autumn, sigh! I might be tempted to get the 29, but I will see and wait, for the moment.

You can also see something of the eye pencils: 02 Extraordinary Sapphire, 04 Gritty Ivy, 06 Powerful Burgundy and 13 Wily Bright Wood. 
02 and 13 are glittery, 4 is shimmery and 6 seems matte again. Pretty colors but nothing we haven't seen before.

What do you think of this LE? Tried anything?

Kiko Life In Rio first impressions and swatches

The nail polishes for Kiko's Summer LE, Life in Rio, called Sun Show Nail Lacquers, are ten and all shimmer-packed. I'm sure they're lovely under the sun, but of course today it's clouded.

No, it's not identical to the other pic, look at the green..

They're 476 Joyful Emerald, 475 Tropical Blue, 474 Luxurious Indigo, 473 Precious Amethyst, 472 Tasty Grapes, 471 Juicy Pitaya, 470 Dainty Passion Fruit, 469 Delicious Mango, 468 Samba Pink, 467 Quindim Gold.

 They all at least will require 2 coats, since I had to put big drops of polish to get a nice result.
Color descriptions are quite faithful, so I'll just give you some indications. 476 is a bit lighter irl. 474, 472 and 468 all have beautiful undertones, lavender, pink and orange respectively. 468 is already a personal favourite, a beautiful warm pink with orange/gold undertones. 467 too has a pink shimmer but less visible, under artificial light it feels almost bronze. But I bet 470 will be quite successful, because it doesn't just have undertones, no, its shimmerness is packed with gold. Fuchsia and gold shimmer, it kinda says summer aloud! Overall they're very pretty, nothing groundbreaking but after the "meh" polishes of the Boulevard Rock, they look awesome. By the way, the polishes of the aforementioned LE are now 1,90 in Kiko shops, sign that I wasn't the only one that was disappointed...

When it comes to the rest of this LE, I didn't see anything groundbreaking in eye or lip products, but the blushes look quite nice (similar to the ones of last summer's LE in a certains sense, bronzers are practically identical). This LE also includes colored eyeliners and I guess I'll have a look at them too.

Kiko Boulevard Rock swatches and first impressions

my hand looks very graceful here

 When I first saw the preview of the Boulevard Rock LE I was honestly disappointed. As much as I loved the Dark Heroine and the Digital Emotion, this one, as it often happens with spring and summer LEs, left me a bit meh. Some of the products look identical to the ones of the Fierce Spirit of last year ( the cream blushes/ lipglosses), and I really dislike the overall design. The rock theme could be interesting, but I have the problem that I dislike denim and never wear it, so the whole denim-themed packaging and inspiration is for me a turn off. It also feels old, and not in a funny '80s way, in a '90s way that reminds me of my childhood.
The nail polishes seemed a huge disappointment too: on the website they look like boring cremes with a hint of shimmer.

Is this true? Well, yes and no.
On my hand you see: 464 Essential Sky Blue, 463 Evasion Lawn Green, 465 British Jeans, 466 French Charcoal, 462 Tribal Purple, 461 Art Poppy Red, 460 Ink Pink, 459 Woodstock Cream.
They aren't mere shimmers, but have a suede/demi-matte finish. I'm thankful for this, at least Kiko put some effort in it, even if given the rock theme I would have appreciated something with a leather effect.
466 is the prettiest one, under sunlight its shimmer is the most visible, and I appreciate 459 too, which is almost a nude. 460 is more salmon than pink and 462 is way lighter irl compared to the website colors.
My opinion: The quality seems good, over the tape they were all one coaters and dried very quickly, however there's nothing to die for here. No groundbreaking color or finish. I doubt I'll get anyone of these.
You could achieve similar effects by simply adding a matte top coat to polishes you already own.

I had planned on trying the mint green cream eyeshadow, but it didn't seem so pretty and minty irl, so I tried 102 Revolutionary Burgundy and 105 Adrenaline Lime: 102 is very pretty and has brown-to-burgundy shimmer similar to UD's Delinquent pencil. 102 looks more like a banana than a lime, and here is unfortunately a bit smudged, but it could be very nice to highlight and to be worn alone too. It's the only thing of this collection I'd like to get, but I'd probably wait for the sales.

And you, did you see this LE? Opinions?

Kiko Digital Emotion first swatches

When I saw the preview of the Kiko holiday collection I had a "wow this is keeps getting more and more 80s!" moment. I went to patrol a Kiko store today, not hoping to find it already but since it was there, well, it was swatching time!

I swatched the polishes and the pencils, who seemed fairly interesting. Sorry for the low quality of the photo, it was taken with a cell phone instead of the regular camera. And yes, I took it in the Kiko store so to preserve the pencil swatches intact.

All of these need at least  2 coats for full opacity.
437 Intuitive Pink is made of small pink and holo glitter in a clear base.The effect is very much holo-ish.
438 Fascinating Burgundy is made of small round purple and silver glitter in a purple base.
439 Cyber Red is red and dark red microglitter in a red base. I had quite high expectations for this but it wasn't as awesome as I would have wanted.
440 Electron Blue is small blue/light blue/navy (and it seems, gold) glitter in a blue base. It looks like a city landscape at night. The glitter are very much shinier than 438 and 439.
441 Illusion Green is one of my personal fave: so unique! Green, gold and light blue microglitter. Some glitters have a rectangular shape. The whole effect is almost a holo!
442 Techno Black is quite different from the others: very small holo glitter in a dark base with what looks a lot like a sand finish. Or it's meant to be black glitter, but the effect is quite sand-like.

After many indecisions I bought the blue one. I was afraid the green one was too "Christmas Tree"-like, but perhaps I'll purchaes it at sales. Reviews of Electron Blue will be here soon!

The pencils (Double Glam Eyeliner) are, from L to R: 100 Light Gold and Ebony, 105 Steel and Black,  103 Turquoise and Electric Blue, 104 Misty Green and Blue Teal.
100 was a pleasant surprise, since the ebony part is actually matte. Out of all of these, 104 was my favourite, dark green and teal? Wow! I didn't get any of those, but they're all very pretty.

P.s. My arm is covered in glitter due to the silver drops. Man, they're extremely glitter packed!

More Dark Heroine swatches

I have more Dark Heroine swatches for you! This time, I have all the Twinkle Eye Pencils right on my arm... and more.

 I kept the photo in an evening, natural light.

Twinkle Eye Pencils in Elastic Teal, Bewitched Periwinkle, Hypnotic Starry Black, Inspiring Golden Brown, Flexuous Burgundy, Desired Gold.

Elastic Teal is still my fave, but brown and burgundy are quite great too, the first one with gold microglitter and the second one with purple microglitter. It'a bit darker than an average burgundy, looks more like a cold brown. The black/gunmetal one is far too glittery for my taste, same for the blue one. The gold/champagne one is almost invisible on my skin, otherwise it would be cool. It seems it has white/silver microglitter.

Smoky Look Eyeshadow in Persuasive Sailor Blue and Harmonic Wine.

The blue one is nothing exceptional but the wine/burgundy one is really pretty.

Latex Like Lipstick in Plastic Red.

As its fellow, it's very promising.  Good texture and effect, it reminds me of Ruby Woo.


And that's all for now, folks!

P.s. Kiko produced new foundations as well and one of them, marked as Ivory, is exactly my skin color, this is a very heartwarming moment *_*

Kiko Dark Heroine first impressions and swatches

Dark Heroine has arrived. I don't have photos of the display, but you can find plenty of them online.

So, let's start with the swatches. I tried all the nail polishes and some other things. There were some surprises, definitely!

Laser Nail Lacquer in: Venom Teal, Strong Chocolate, Fluent Red, Psychedelic Blue, Sensual Candy, Gothic Purple.

Gothic Purple is very similar to Essence's Chic Reloaded, the others aren't anything special, except for Venom Teal, the other duochrome that goes from teal to violet/blue. Fluent Red and Psychedelic blue are very pigmented and could probably be one coaters.

Twinkle Eye Pencil in Elastic Teal (above the polishes).

I wasn't very impressed by those eye pencils on the website, but they're much better irl. The one I tried is of a beautiful teal with small blue glitter, and I have completely fallen in love with it. The glitters aren't exaggerate, and I bet they have a great effect once worn.

Smoky Look Eyeshadow in Heroic Brown and Inspiration Blue.

They're both pretty great, but I expected the blue one to be, well, lighter and brighter.
I made a comparison with the Sephora pencil in Azur Blue I own, and they're almost identical:

As you can guess, the Sephora one is the one on the right. I don't think I'll buy this eyeshadow right now, maybe when it goes on sale, since there's more product than the Sephora pencil, also considering the prices.

I also tried three lipstick. They're a bit smudgy now because of my watch...

Latex Like Lipstick in Pulpy Plum, Iconic Magenta (on the left), Glare Fuchsia (under Pulpy Plum).

As I was expecting, Pulpy Plum is gorgeous and I am probably going to buy it. Applying it was nice, and for once the name is well merited, it kinda feels like latex/plastic in a good way. Guaranteed to give you the perfect android lips!

I have no swatches of the eyeshadow palettes because the one I liked, the number 2, was a bit disappointing. TOO. MUCH. GLITTER. Maybe when it goes on sale... but certainly not now. The blushes seemed nice, and the highlighters have good pigmentation too.

Summary: Right now I'm interested in the teal eye pencil, the plum lipstick and the teal nail polish. They would look great together.